Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from seventy recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

Although I have not been blogging much for various reasons (hampered most recently by the sad demise of my HP Probook), I have been writing. My new paper on the distinctiveness of the Crown in judicial review of administrative action will be published in the Review of Constitutional Studies shortly. Here is the abstract for “Royal Treatment: the Special Status of the Crown in Administrative Law“: …

I’ve been alerted to the fact that the Stargrove case at the Competition Tribunal has been discontinued and apparently settled. While the settlement is confidential, it would seem that you can still get the Beatles’ 1964 CD “Can’t Buy Me Love” and several other early Beatles and other golden oldies albums for $5.00 each at Canadian Walmart. That was what Stargrove was fighting for. That would seem to suggest the the Canadian music industry blinked and backed down. …

Some would have you believe that trials in Canada are secret affairs that take place behind locked doors in deserted courtrooms and that the Star Chamber is alive and well in Canada. They would have you think that evidence is concealed from the public, and judges are black boxes — their decisions inaccessible and undecipherable to the larger community, and only the bright light of television cameras and public broadcasts will cure these ills. …

The international trade in endangered species is a lucrative business, with some recent estimates putting its worth at up to $20 billion annually, making it one of the most profitable international crimes, behind the illegal drug trade, the illicit arms trade, and human trafficking. The impacts of the illicit trade in wildlife are truly dire. It has a devastating impact on local ecosystems and global biodiversity, driving an increasing number of species, including elephants, Siberian tigers, rhinos, and pangolins, towards extinction. …

The Conference Board of Canada and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia co-hosted the inaugural Canadian Privacy Summit on April 13–14, 2016, in Vancouver, British Columbia. It brought together many of Canada’s foremost privacy experts from the public and private sectors in a wide-ranging conversation about the nature of privacy in Canada. …